One of Our Own and His Widow’s Mite

When you pack at Feed My Starving Children, someone called a “Team Leader” briefs you about world hunger, then teaches you how to assemble meals. You spend two hours with these people, but you never learn much about them or their own amazing journeys to a place of self-sacrifice. So let me share one.

Adam Hanson, former editor of Need Magazine and lead singer for the indie band Semeron, is now a Team Leader at Feed My Starving Children’s Coon Rapids packing site. You’d never know by his gentle demeanor, but Adam is a fierce performer — and an even fiercer Christ-follower.

Last November, for his 29th birthday, Adam reserved a Tuesday evening shift for 70 friends and family to join him packing meals. Meals he pledged to finance with his own money. Money he didn’t have.

To raise those thousands of dollars, Adam landed on a garage sale. But not just any sale, purging unwanted junk. A “Widow’s Mite Fundraiser,” putting ALL his belongings up for auction.

Everything.

The night before he turned 29, in his church fellowship hall, there was Adam. And there, surrendered, were his things. Books, clothes, favorite albums, and souvenirs of world travel, neatly stacked, labeled and offered for sale. Even his guitar and Semeron stage duds – iconic hat and all.

Surrounded by people buying his things, I chatted with Adam that evening. “The people we’re sending this food to just have so much less than we do. It’s been an amazing experience to understand how much God can move in our lives if we don’t rely on the things that we have but the God that we have. Really, I just hope that a lot of kids are fed and we’d glorify God with what we do tonight.”

Adam didn’t know what he’d go home with that night – or what he’d wear to work the next day, let alone performing. But he opened his hands, and he trusted.

He raised around $7,400 in total, and gave it all to feed kids. We, his colleagues, were so moved by his sacrifice that at staff prayer in the morning, we choked out a tearful “Happy Birthday” as we celebrated anew the joy in “holding all things loosely.”

And then we surprised Adam with the guitar and stage clothes we bought back. Because you just have to see Adam rock on stage.